If we use the Vendor category for internal information rather than truly using it as a vendor. Currently we use it for broad ways of describing a product such as personalized or non-personalized. Would that negatively impact SEO?
Do you mean vendor property on the product?
Yes, this will be used on the storefront, in JSON-LD structured data:
So Search Engines will see this value (containing all the wrong data).
(the link is to the older version of the theme code, newer versions use different code, but still use this field anyway).
You’d rather move this info into metafields – this would not surface where you do not want it to and you can have some data structure instead of one text field.
You can use, say, free Flow app to automate the transition.
Just prefix the “personalized or non-personalized” with YOUR brands name or the source vendor.
Optionally make a custom vendor page that describes the differences.
In general don’t overload simple data fields that will be in SEO without a reaaaaally good reason or guidance.
Hi @loren2,
If you’re referring to the vendor property (brand/manufacturer) in your product schema, the answer is yes. The vendor is a critical variable for product traceability; search engines like Google treat the vendor as a distinct entity to evaluate and categorize your catalog.
Labeling a vendor as “personalized” or “non-personalized” lacks semantic value. It fails to map to a recognized Organization entity, which can lead to poor indexing and negatively impact your SEO performance.
Hope this helps 
Thanks everyone for your responses, they’ve been so helpful!
Hi there @loren2,
The short answer is yes, using the Vendor field for internal notes can definitely hurt your SEO. Shopify automatically links your Vendor field to the “Brand” attribute in your website’s hidden code (called Schema markup). If Google scans your page and sees that the brand of an item is “Personalized,” it gets confused because that is not a real company name. This can stop your products from getting those nice, detailed rich results on Google.
It will also cause major headaches if you ever use Google Merchant Center for Shopping listings. Google strictly requires real brand names, and they will quickly disapprove your products if the brand field is just an internal category. To organize your store internally without hurting your SEO, you should use Shopify Tags or Product Metafields instead. They are completely invisible to search engines but work perfectly for backend sorting.
If you want to make sure Google reads your product data perfectly, I highly recommend using SearchPie: SEO, Speed & Schema. It automatically builds advanced schema markup for your store, ensuring search engines always understand your exact product details and brand information without any confusing errors.
Hope this helps,